I am a Texan, born and raised. I love my state, even with its various challenges and imperfections. Texas has many significant historical tags: the battle of the Alamo, Roe v. Wade, and, of course, Juneteenth. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and declared that all enslaved people in Texas were free, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. That declaration seared into our state’s conscience the duty to defend freedom and to protect the dignity of every life.
One hundred sixty years later, I honor the early black leaders who were among the first voices in the United States to defend that dignity for the unborn, championing the values of life, family, equality, and freedom. As a board-certified obstetrician in Texas, I carry their legacy every time I counsel a patient. Their advocacy reminds us that true justice protects the most vulnerable.
For example, Dr. Mildred Faye Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1951, was a surgeon and one of the earliest and most influential leaders of the pro-life movement. She was co-founder and president of the National Right to Life Committee and viewed abortion as a betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath and a threat to black lives.
There is also Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the civil rights movement’s most powerful voices. Hamer endured unspeakable hardship, including forced sterilization, state-sanctioned police violence, and at least one attempt on her life. She was a strong voice against abortion, referring to it as “legalized murder” during a 1969 White House conference on food, nutrition, and health. In a 1971 speech, Hamer said, “The methods used to take human life, such as abortion … amount to genocide.”
In 1977, Reverend Jesse Jackson wrote, “There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life.… That was the premise of slavery.”
Yet today, my profession as a whole and the professional body meant to guide us have strayed far from the family-inclusive vision laid out by black leaders in the early days of the pro-life movement.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists places politics over patients by strongly endorsing induced abortion over other options. This is contrary to its own issued guidance, which states that medical professionals should counsel patients with unplanned pregnancies about three options: carrying and parenting the baby, adoption, and induced abortion.
As a former ACOG board member and currently practicing physician, I believe we cannot ignore the devastating toll of induced abortion on communities of color, especially the black community.
Before we look at today’s reality, it’s vital for us to understand how the “abortion-is-healthcare” mindset diverges from the vision of early black leaders who saw only too vividly what induced abortion would mean for their community.
When the modern American pro-life movement began to take shape in the late 1960s and early 1970s — in response to the push for abortion legalization in various states — systemic racism, historical abuse, and profiteering concerns galvanized black advocates.
Black right-to-life advocacy was, at its core, about self-determination, the recognition of the value of life, bodily autonomy, and trust (or lack thereof) in institutions that had long oppressed black Americans. During these early days, particularly around the time of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, this advocacy was commonly called the “right to life” movement.
This term was borrowed from the vocabulary of the civil rights movement, along with others such as “equal protection” and “personhood,” to argue that unborn children were entitled to the protections afforded by the Constitution. The movement emerged as a coalition of religious leaders, civil rights advocates, medical professionals, and community organizers, many of whom were African American and saw the protection of unborn life as a natural extension of the civil rights struggle.
As of 2022, non-Hispanic black women had the highest abortion rates in the U.S. Specifically, the black abortion rate (24.4%) was nearly twice as high as the black birth rate (12.3%).
These might just seem like numbers on a page, but the reality of the situation is heartbreaking, especially when they are put into context: Black Americans made up 11.7% of people living in the U.S. at that time but accounted for approximately 40% of abortions.
Addressing this issue requires improving access to quality healthcare, contraception, economic opportunity, and supportive family policies. Instead, many pro-abortion advocates seem to treat induced abortion as a way to curtail future poverty.
Take ACOG’s 2024 statement on increasing access to abortion: “Legislative restrictions … decrease access to abortion, particularly for individuals with low incomes and those living long distances from health care professionals.”
Why? Because approximately 75% of women seeking induced abortion are living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.
However, poverty is intrinsically complicated and systemic. And more than 50 years after abortion’s widespread legalization, there hasn’t been any meaningful dent in the poverty rate. Framing abortion as a solution to poverty shifts attention away from these root causes and implies that reducing births is a substitute for addressing inequality.
More offensive than that, advocating induced abortion as the way out of poverty implies that poor people should not have children, which echoes historical eugenics and coercive population control policies, often targeted at marginalized groups.
Our black communities deserve much better. Our Hispanic communities deserve better. All of our communities deserve better. For the last 20 years, I have worked diligently to help educate my Hispanic community on ways to reduce unintended pregnancy rates. But more needs to be done.
SENATE GOP MEGABILL WOULD DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD
As a life-affirming OB-GYN, I am committed to providing evidence-based, compassionate care to every patient who walks through my door — regardless of their background or circumstances — and I urge the professional body of ACOG to do the same because all patients, including mother and unborn child, deserve the complete scope of information I’m able to provide them, not a politically driven hierarchy of care.
This Juneteenth, I reflect with gratitude on the enduring contributions of African American leaders who have fought for equity, dignity, freedom, and justice. Their legacy is both an inspiration and a challenge to continue advancing equity and honoring every life, including the preborn entrusted to our care.
Dr. Hector Chapa is a nationally and internationally recognized physician, author, and speaker in Obstetrics and Gynecology. He is a practicing board-certified Obstetrician & Gynecologist and serves as clinical associate professor at Texas A&M College of Medicine.